Over the next three years, he travelled to dozens of countries, meeting with politicians, activists, and dissidents confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that was tearing America apart.Īlong the way, a Russian opposition leader he spends time with is poisoned, the Hong Kong protesters he comes to know see their movement snuffed out, and America itself reaches the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a second chance. To understand what was happening in America, Rhodes decided to look outwards. In 2017, as Ben Rhodes was helping Barack Obama begin his next chapter, the legacy they worked to build for eight years was being taken apart. After the fall, we must determine what it means to be American again. In the span of just thirty years, this assumption would come crashing down. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.To be born American in the late twentieth century was to take the fact of a particular kind of American exceptionalism as granted – a state of nature arrived at after all else had failed. The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today-from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why.
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